Miserable hurricane season is over, but impacts linger

Thursday is the last day of the highly active, deadly and destructive 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, but Floridians will feel its impact for years.

In Lake County, the season left a mark. Hurricane Irma caused more than $41 million in damage to commercial and residential properties. Millions more went to debris removal and other recovery efforts. Residents of Astor spent weeks living with floodwater and businesses lost thousands in income as customers stayed away.

“This storm was more widespread than the last storms we got in 2004. The eye came over the whole county,” said Peter Peebles of the Lake County Property Appraiser’s Office.

The property appraiser’s office was responsible for assessing storm damage to structures in the county. While the storm did cause millions in damage, it was not catastrophic in most cases.

“The majority was roof damage from tree branches or missing shingles more than buildings being destroyed,” Peebles said.

Some homes did suffer heavy damage in the Umatilla area due to a hurricane-spawned tornado. But still most of the damage involved roofs.

The final damage estimates took weeks to complete because flooding kept appraisers away from Astor. Once they did get in there, the damage was extensive. While home to only about 1,500 people, there was more than $2.3 million in damage.

Some of the expense is still unclear. This week, storm debris haulers should finish the first pass through the county. The storm dropped about 350,000 cubic yards of debris. The cost to haul it all away will cost millions. So far, $6 million in expenses is clear. About 75 percent of the cleanup costs get reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Politicians in Florida are still scrambling to determine how much of the next state budget will be dedicated to covering losses that may or may not be paid by the federal government.

The massive hit from Hurricane Irma caused direct physical and emotional impacts in Florida, and ripples continue to come ashore as thousands of people flee Hurricane Maria's devastation in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Lawmakers are also looking at regulatory changes for nursing homes and debris-removal companies, as well as changes dealing with issues such as evacuation lanes, shelters and a potential state fuel reserve.

Gov. Rick Scott, who was a constantly visible face before and after Irma struck, said Monday while in Tampa that he'd like to boost the availability of propane for generators before the 2018 storm season.

“You always learn something,” Scott said. “Everybody had generators. This last time we started running low on propane. I want to make sure that doesn't happen again. But everyone did a good job. Highway safety, we kept the fuel going.”

Visit Florida spent $5 million to tell potential tourists that the state quickly reopened after Hurricane Irma, even as scars from the September storm remain etched across agricultural fields and the Florida Keys.

Meanwhile, 72 deaths in Florida are currently attributed to the Irma, according to reports supplied by county medical examiners to the state Division of Emergency Management.

The fatalities include 14 cases involving carbon monoxide, eight drownings, four electrocutions and 14 incidents involving blunt-force injuries. Deaths occurred statewide, with six in the Florida Keys, five in Duval County and even two in Leon County, which sustained relatively little damage from Irma compared to other parts of the state.

The numbers don't include 14 deaths of residents of a Broward County nursing home — 12 were recently ruled homicides — that have caused Scott to push for new rules requiring nursing homes and assisted-living facilities to have emergency generators.

Mark Wool, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Tallahassee office, called 2017 the busiest for the Atlantic since 2005.

“We didn't have any things working against tropical cyclone development like in recent years,” Wool said. “There was no El Nino in effect, which tends to suppress things. Didn't see a lot of dust coming off Africa. We had a very warm ocean and the depth of the warm water was quite large. And all of those things tend to fuel development of a lot of storms.”

Emergency-management officials each year stress preparing for hurricanes. But Wool said the flatness of Florida requires additional vigilance by coastal communities against flooding, as the state is also experiencing a period of rising sea levels.

“Parts of South Beach are flooding now without any storms. Blue skies, tidal flooding, the king tides,” Wool said. “We've seen times in the historic record where we've had large fluctuations in sea level, and we're certainly on the upswing.”

As of Nov. 13, more than 830,000 property owners across the state had filed claims for $5.88 billion in insured losses from Irma, which was one of four storms — Tropical Storm Emily, Irma, Hurricane Nate and Tropical Storm Philippe — that had a direct impact on the state during the six-month hurricane season.

Emily in early August made landfall on Anna Maria Island and quickly was downgraded to a tropical depression. Nate brushed the western Panhandle on Oct. 8 as the center of the storm came ashore near Biloxi, Mississippi. Philippe brought rain and a couple of tornadoes to the southern part of the state as it made landfall Oct. 29 with 45 mph winds in Southwest Florida.

Overall, there were 17 named storms this year. The most devastation came from Harvey's Aug. 26 landfall in Texas, Irma's double landfall and run-up of Florida starting Sept. 10, and Maria's destruction of utilities and other infrastructure across Puerto Rico on Sept. 20.

While spinning in the Atlantic, Irma reached maximum sustained winds of 185 mph, a pace it held for a record 37 consecutive-hours. Nate also set a record in October for the fastest forward motion recorded for a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We certainly did establish some records,” Wool said. “Harvey's rainfall established a new rainfall record for one system in the United States. I think some areas had 60 inches of rains, which was phenomenal.”

Irma also set new benchmarks for evacuees — an estimated 6.5 million people left their homes in advance of the storm — and power outages and restoration crews. Florida Power & Light, for example, reported 90 percent of its customers — about 10 million people — were without power on average 2.3 days.

The agriculture industry has put a preliminary estimate of $2.5 billion on its losses from the storm.

Staff writer Carlos Medina contributed to this report.

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